Crossing the Line

by Frédérique Molay

  Nico looked at his detectives. “We’ll have to check his bank transactions and work out his schedule, particularly on that Tuesday, in the morning.”

  “I understand,” Mrs. Guedj said.

  “The quickest way for us to check his bank account would be online. Is that how you do your banking?”

  “Yes, I manage our personal accounts online. Bruno took care of the big investments, such as the apartment and the pharmacy. We were planning to buy a vacation home in Brittany.”

  Nico gave her a compassionate smile and said, “Thank you for agreeing to review your checking account with the commander.”

  “What about my sons?”

  “The only thing I ask all three of you is to keep this conversation to yourselves. Any of it getting out could compromise the investigation.”

  “You can count on us,” Mrs. Guedj said, leaving the room with the boys. Kriven followed.

  “Franck, give Jean-Marie a call,” Nico said. “They should still be searching the pharmacy. Have him ask the staff if Guedj mentioned this old college friend or the wrong number. He called it eleven times. He was obsessed. How far would you have gone?”

  “I would have broken down sooner and gone to see Bastien!”

  “Not without my authorization.”

  “Of course, sir,” Plassard said, cracking a smile.

  “We need to follow this lead. It’s the only one with any substance.”

  The captain nodded and stepped away to call Jean-Marie Rost. Nico decided to call Gamby. It was getting late, but Gamby never seemed to remember that he had a home. He lived at headquarters, in front of his computer. Gamby answered on the first ring.

  “I figured you’d call.”

  “I want you to go through Guedj’s phone records again. Here’s the story. The guy runs into an old college friend he hasn’t seen in twenty years. Said friend gives him a wrong number. For five days straight, he keeps trying to reach him at that number.”

  “That’s stupid. It makes no sense.”

  “Exactly. After that, Guedj gets a series of anonymous calls between September 23 and November 16. The calls get to him, and he becomes depressed and afraid. He thinks someone is going to kill him, and he plans his counterattack.”

  “A posthumous counterattack.”

  “Again, exactly. He knows he can’t escape the dark forces hounding him, and he is going to die. He tries something incredible, even impossible: taunting his murderers postmortem.”

  “It’s the makings of a movie,” Gamby said. His unflappable tone reminded Nico of the electronic devices Gamby worked with.

  Gamby, like the other detectives at La Crim’, was familiar with cases that blurred the line between fiction and reality. “What do you want me to look for?” he asked Nico.

  “Other unusual calls, numbers he had never called before or gotten calls from, an increase in incoming or outgoing calls. Maybe he tried other means to reach his friend.”

  “What’s the time frame?”

  “From the day he ran into his former buddy, September 15, to the day he died in November. You’ll have to compare that time period with previous months. Give Helen Vasnier a heads up.”

  Nico ended the call. The search of the apartment had been completed, and all the neighbors had been contacted.

  “Nobody in the building heard anything the day Guedj died or recognized the composite image,” Plassard said.

  “The murderer must have had the code to get into the building, either 10 Rue Roger Verlomme or 5 Rue des Minimes,” Nico said.

  “Maybe Guedj had an appointment,” Plassard said.

  “An appointment with the murderer?” Vidal said. “Could he have given him the code? That seems crazy, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but how else would the killer have known that Guedj was at home?” Plassard said. “Unless he followed him. How would he have gotten in, though?”

  “Some good soul rang him in. It happens all the time. We may never know,” Almeida said.

  Plassard nodded. “That’s possible. In that case, the man who came here was not the same one who visited the pharmacy, since no one recognized the image. A number of people could be involved in this thing.”

  “Let’s say that’s the case. They are probably careful and well organized. What did we get from the neighborhood canvass around the pharmacy?”

  “Nothing more,” Plassard said. “Rost got the list of customers who paid with a credit card or check on the day the unknown man showed up. Théron’s squad has started contacting them. Two of the customers recognized the man when we showed them the composite. They described him as sinister-looking, dressed in black. He was the kind of man you notice, but he didn’t seem to have much in the way of distinguishing marks.”

  “Did Guedj mention anything to his colleagues about meeting his old friend?”

  “He told Melanie, who noticed that her boss seemed to be feeling a little dejected. She told him that most friendships last only so long, and many people don’t want to renew ties with old buddies from the past. She advised him not to let it get to him. Guedj seemed to agree and never mentioned it again. Period.”

  Guedj’s older son came into the room and looked at Nico. “Sir, they want you in the office.”

  The chief followed him to the office.

  “On Tuesday, September 15, he made two purchases with his credit card,” Kriven said. “The first at the bookstore and the second at a pizzeria.”

  “He brought pizzas home for dinner,” Mrs. Guedj said.

  “It would be useful to know what time he made the bookstore purchase,” Nico said.

  “For that, we’ll have to wait until tomorrow, because we’ll need a warrant from Magistrate Becker,” Kriven said.

  “I think we’ve covered everything for today,” Nico concluded.

  The detectives said good-bye to the Guedj family, promising to keep them informed.

  Outside, the harsh cold bit into their cheeks, but the city seemed unusually peaceful. The snow muffled the everyday urban noise. At the curbside, a father was pulling a Christmas tree from his car, reminding Nico that Caroline and Dimitri had talked about decorating the house the following weekend. Realizing that he would be with the two people he loved most in the world, while his ex-wife would be alone, three hundred miles away, he made a decision. He would contact her.

  As he started his car and made his way into the stream of traffic, his thoughts returned to Bruno Guedj. He hadn’t had the strength to fight. But in his despair, he had taken a wild gamble, sending a message from beyond in the hope that someone—some cop like Nico—would manage to follow the leads back in time to find the culprit.

  Guedj had won the gamble. By the time Nico reached the Place de la Concorde, oblivious to the Champs-Élysées, which was festive with holiday lights, and the Christmas market stretched along the road to the Rond-Point, his resolve had strengthened.

  That was when his phone rang. He answered, using his in-car speakerphone, and Bastien Gamby’s voice filled the vehicle’s interior. “I’ve got something.”

  Nico shivered. The noose was tightening.

  “Guedj started making unusual calls on Thursday, September 17, which was two days after he met his old college friend. It went on for about ten days and then stopped.”

  The encounter at the pharmacy during the last part of September had probably put an end to his calls to that number. He knew there was something to fear. Unfortunately, it was too late. His fate had been sealed.

  “Then he started calling the numbers he’d never contacted before,” Gamby said.

  “Yes…And what does that tell us?”

  “I bet he was trying to be a master detective. Miss Scarlet killed Professor Plum with a knife in the conservatory. That kind of thing.”

  “Who, exactly, did he suspect?”

  “One name stands out: Parize.”

  At that moment, Nico was sure they were headed in the right direction, and the wind was at their backs.

 
; 15

  The dogs were out. How long before they came scratching at his door? How long did he have to get rid of all the evidence and keep up appearances? Damn it. He was losing ground. What good had all his success served? God was taking him for a ride. But the Almighty needed to hold on tight, because he intended to fight to the very end. He was a kamikaze. A killer.

  16

  The following morning, David Kriven walked into Nico’s office without knocking. He waved a piece of paper at his boss.

  “What’s that?” Nico asked.

  “Credit card records from the bank. Becker got us that warrant right away. Guedj bought something at the bookstore on September 15, at 11:47 in the morning. Seventeen minutes later, he called the number his so-called friend had given him.”

  “And the nightmare began.”

  “Jean-Marie is questioning Denis Roy.”

  “Perfect. We need to make sure that buying the pharmacy wasn’t the motive for the murder.”

  Nobody was talking suicide anymore.

  “My team is working on Guedj’s schedule. Nothing of note yet, other than his appointments with the notary and the dentist. And we’re going over all his calls again.”

  Who was the mysterious person Guedj had spoken to at the end of September? What did he want from him? Who was Parize?

  “Any news from Claire?” Kriven asked.

  An entire family had been killed in an apartment fire during the night. This kind of thing often seemed to have a relatively ordinary cause—malfunctioning heating equipment or careless smoking, for example. But in a number of cases, something criminal was involved. Claire Le Marec had a long day ahead of her with the explosive specialists from the crime lab.

  “She’s thinking it was arson. Are you ready?”

  “Right behind you.”

  They were off to the bookstore. In the hallway, they ran into Dominique Kreiss, the division’s only profiler. Deputy Commissioner Michel Cohen was skeptical about the role of psychology in police work, but he had hired Kreiss to stay current with the times. He didn’t want to import American-style profiling to France, but instead to have a better knowledge of criminal psychology. She had turned out to be a priceless asset, particularly in her area of specialization: sexual offenses and murders. She worked hard and was determined to have her job recognized by the police officers and magistrates who remained distrustful.

  “I’m working on a case with Hureau in vice,” she said, stopping quickly to greet them. Then the shapely brunette with mischievous green eyes continued walking down the hall, with Kriven watching all the way. Nico punched him on the shoulder. Kriven held up his hands and gave a shrug of helplessness.

  The Vigot-Maloine bookstore at the Odéon intersection was large and had a dozen or so employees. The atmosphere struck Nico immediately. Fascinated amateurs, students, and practitioners roamed the aisles full of books. An intoxicating smell of paper and glue hung in the air.

  They showed their badges at one of the cash registers, and Bruno Guedj’s editor materialized. The man’s moustache seemed to complement his bow tie.

  “I really liked Bruno and was shocked to hear about his death. I think about it often,” he said, leading them up the stairs to his office, which was filled to the ceiling with piles of manuscripts. “Please sit down. We may not publish popular novels, but believe me, I receive submissions every day. Experts in every area want to leave something for posterity.”

  “Was Bruno Guedj one of them?” Nico asked.

  “Yes. He was both a top professional and a fine teacher. His journal articles were remarkable. Unfortunately, he had not yet finished his book.”

  “It was about drug compounding. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, that’s it. One of his colleagues has agreed to finish the manuscript, and Bruno’s name will appear first on the cover. All the royalties will go to his family. That is good news for his sons.”

  “I’m sure they will be touched by the gesture. According to his calendar, Bruno Guedj had an appointment with you on Tuesday, September 15, at ten in the morning.”

  “I checked my schedule while waiting for you, and, indeed, that was the last time I saw him. That wasn’t supposed to be the case.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not used to going two months without hearing from my authors. I tried to reach him and left three or four messages on his cell phone and as many at the pharmacy, but he didn’t call back. I didn’t want to bother his wife. At the same time, I wasn’t especially concerned. Things always get more hectic toward the end of the year. I was planning to drive over to the pharmacy on the Rue Thiron if I didn’t hear from him by the beginning of December. I regret that I didn’t do it earlier.”

  “That probably wouldn’t have changed anything.”

  “It’s the ‘probably’ that bothers me.”

  “How did Bruno seem to you when you saw him on September 15?”

  “Great. He was enthusiastic, happy to be alive, full of ideas. He even mentioned that he was thinking about teaching. I really couldn’t believe he committed suicide. Just goes to show you: everything can change in just a matter of weeks. It’s frightening.”

  “And then, after your appointment?”

  “He browsed at the bookstore, which he loved to do. The bookstore has over thirty thousand titles, and you can easily spend a few hours looking through the shelves any time you visit. Bruno left with his arms full of books every time he came in.”

  “Did he talk to anyone that day?” Kriven asked.

  “Everyone knew him. He’d been coming here for thirty years and was a good customer. I checked with Thibauld, the salesclerk who was working that morning.”

  “We would like to talk to him,” Nico said.

  They went back down to the ground floor and made their way around piles of papers, a photocopier, and a coffee machine that almost entirely blocked the hallway.

  “Mr. Guedj asked for a book whose title he couldn’t quite remember,” Thibauld said. “I looked it up on the computer and went to find it on one of the shelves. He followed me. That’s when I lost his attention. Literally. He just shut up and didn’t say another word. He was staring at a man a few yards away. Then, after a few minutes, he went up to the guy. The man didn’t seem to remember Mr. Guedj at first, but finally, he acknowledged him.”

  “Do you recall what he said?” Nico asked.

  “He admitted that he was the man Mr. Guedj remembered, an old college friend. They hadn’t seen each other for quite some time, and Mr. Guedj seemed excited.”

  “Did Guedj call him by name?”

  “I’m pretty sure it was Christophe. That’s my brother’s name, which is why it stuck with me.”

  Nico silently thanked Thibauld’s parents. “What was this Christophe like?”

  “Ordinary. Mr. Guedj was excited about seeing him, but the guy didn’t look like he felt the same way. He seemed very uptight, almost like a killjoy.”

  “What happened next?”

  “Oh, it didn’t last long. The guy said he had an appointment and left.”

  “How did they say good-bye?”

  “Mr. Guedj insisted on exchanging phone numbers.”

  “And?”

  “Christophe wrote down his number and took off. Generally, I don’t intrude in the private matters of our customers, but Mr. Guedj seemed so thrown off, I wanted to say something to make him feel better.”

  “What exactly do you mean?”

  “I told him that I ran into an old friend a while ago, and I realized that we no longer had anything in common. There was too much water under the bridge. Sometimes you just leave people behind.”

  Thibauld was some twenty or so years younger than Bruno Guedj, which didn’t give him a lot of authority in the area of life experience. His words, however, had affected Guedj. He had gone home and told his wife that a lot of water had flowed under the bridge, and if his old buddy didn’t want to renew an ancient friendship, it was his choice. But did he
really believe that?

  “I made up the story, of course,” Thibauld said. “I just felt bad for him.”

  Nico smiled. He liked the young man.

  “What did Mr. Guedj do after you spoke with him?” Commander Kriven asked.

  “He paid for his books and left.”

  “Not long after meeting that Christophe, correct?”

  “Fifteen or so minutes, no more.”

  Bruno Guedj had certainly tried to telephone the friend as soon as he left the bookstore. Why?

  Kriven pulled out the picture of the unknown man from the pharmacy. “Is this the man?”

  “No.”

  “Would you recognize Christophe if you saw him?”

  “I think so.”

  “Could you help us come up with a picture like this one?”

  “I’ll try, of course.”

  Nico looked around the bookstore, with its thousands of books. He understood why Bruno Guedj liked it here.

  Once outside, Kriven contacted Plassard. Rost had finished grilling Denis Roy. He was convinced that the manager was no killer and that buying the pharmacy wasn’t sufficient motive for murder, especially because he was taking on a huge mortgage to do so. Nico was not surprised.

  “What about Guedj’s telephone calls?”

  “The best for last,” Plassard said. “Get back here right away, so we can tell you. It’s big.”

  “How big?” Kriven asked.

  “Sumo big.”

  “I don’t know where you get your taste for suspense, Plassard,” Nico said. “You’d better impress me, right now.”

  The Coquibus room smelled of testosterone. The team had been working nonstop.

  “We called everybody Bruno Guedj contacted in the second half of September. Which member of the Parize family do you want, Chief? He called just about all of them. The mother, father, brother, cousins, and even the ex-wife. I wasn’t joking when I said it was big.”

  Nico was getting impatient. “Where is this leading?”

  “To a certain Christophe Parize.”